“For many centuries,” Conor Cruise O'Brien observed in a recent article on nationalist ideology, “the grand legitimizer of hatred in our culture was called Religion. Then after the great surfeit of the Wars of Religion, the power of religion to legitimize war and persecution began to fade and the cult of Nationalism took its place … Henceforward, it was in the name of the nation that men would be most likely to feel it legitimate to hate and kill...